Queensland Academy of Sport

So, uh, that was, for me, that was, that was perfect.

You know, I was, I was, um, surrounded by a leadership team who, you know, the headmaster was an Aussie and, uh, the, the guy who was the director of sport had worked at the Queensland Institute of Sport as his previous job as, you know, swimming program manager.

And, uh, so had a bunch of people who, who probably thought in a similar way to the way that I think, and, and that, that's obviously great synergy across all of those levels and, and it, and it helps things to, to happen and get done.

And were some of those things that you found easy, um, within the Millfield because everyone was aligned, were there more challenges at national governing body level with that? How did you break those barriers down? I think that's what I find with a lot of coaches these days, um, they kinda stop when they get to that wall.

has run parallel to her extensive board service across small and large social purpose organisations, major government infrastructure and industry broads and private sector companies.

With her current portfolio encompassing CleanCo Queensland, Queensland Academy of Sport, Queensland University of Technology and Uniting Care Queensland.

In 2014, Susan was appointed a member of the Order of Australia in recognition of her significant contributions to business and to the community.

Welcome, Susan.

When I was battling with neck injuries and a few other things, I actually enrolled in a sports psychology degree at Griffith University.

um and i was pretty close to to stopping tennis and and taking it but uh started to actually get some results going when i won a couple of futures tournaments and i thought oh maybe i just need to give myself a little bit more of a chance to to see what i'm capable of and so i put that on the back burner and and kind of never got back to it and uh so with the coaching i think once i'd i'd decided to stop playing, I got an offer pretty quickly from Jeff Masters to work with some of the Queensland Academy of Sport students, including John Millman at the time, Sam Stoza, Mark Kimmich, there was quite a few, Robert Smeets, there was quite a few good players that I was working with Jeff as the lead.

He was the head coach at the Queensland Academy of Sport.

And then he'd also worked in Hong Kong and knew some people over there that their son was just coming out of finishing a degree at Pepperdine University.

And he encouraged me to go and have a meeting with them because they were trying to find a coach to travel with him.

What is that? It's a precious medal.

Our friend David Lyons, chair of the Queensland Academy of Sport, talks about it all the time.

He does, actually.

He

I am an exercise physiologist by qualification and I have a personal history of being quite a high level athlete, which is what drove me to studying exercise physiology in the first place.

But throughout my university degree, I was doing internships at the Queensland Academy of Sport.

I was working for the Brisbane Lions.

I was really going down the pathway into high performance sport.

Yeah, 'cause he was identified quite early on apparently by a, by a Sri Lankan coach, uh, Sanath Priyantha.

Um, and then he was brought into like elite training environments in Australia in the Queensland Institute of Sport.

And it's interesting to see how this talent's been spotted early on, um, because he'd probably never thrown a javelin in his life, but perhaps they saw something in the cricket.

It'd be fascinating to find out, because, I mean, talent ID, as we know, is one of your, is one of your passions, and I think we're gonna be looking at it a little bit more in the upcoming months maybe.